Making Friends With the Devil
Your mind can be a powerful and splendid ally. It can be a motivator, a planner and a supreme puzzle solver. But it’s not necessarily your friend.
I was in the grocery store when I passed the ice cream section. I saw boxes of chocolate ice cream bars covered with dark chocolate. Hagen Dazs. My favorite. I hesitated a moment. “Go ahead,”
a voice in my head encouraged me. “Buy some. They’re delicious.”
“They’re bad for you,” another voice said.
“You always eat healthy,” the first voice said. “It’s one little ice cream bar. You deserve it.”
Remember those cartoons where someone has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other and they’re battling? Guess who won? I put a box of ice cream bars in my cart and I hurried
home so they wouldn’t melt. I removed the paper covering on one of them and took a bite. My taste buds flooded with pleasure as I kept on eating – until the first voice, the devil voice, began singing a different tune. “You shouldn’t be eating that,” it told me. “It’s unhealthy and it’s fattening. You know better. Now you’re screwed.”
I told the devil in a friendly voice to go take a walk and if I needed him, I’d let him know. And I finished
my ice cream bar.
Those of us with loud, persistent inner voices (isn’t that all of us?) are faced with daily obstacles that are so familiar, they seem like old acquaintances that cause us suffering. I must not be doing this right, we tell ourselves. What if I’d made a different choice? Is it better to deny myself or to feel guilty?
How about making a third choice – doing what we want and feeling okay about it?
When I was a kid, I thought that by the time I was in the third chapter of my life like I am now, I’d have it all figured out. The inner critic would have gone away and a sense of all knowing would have replaced it. I was wrong. I was in a Stephen Levine workshop years ago, when he said that he was out in nature one day, sitting in the sun by a river, feeling good about himself when he heard a voice. It said, “I forgive you for everything.” He was stunned. He took it in and he felt light and free . . . until he said, “Yes but . . .”
We just can’t take it in. We can’t forgive ourselves for the things we did and the things we didn’t do. It takes constant practice to rise above the darkness and leave ourselves alone.
If we think we’ve overcome our obstacles for good, that isn’t a sign of enlightenment. It’s a sign that we are expecting perfection. But it doesn’t exist like that. The act of staying with ourselves in the face of fear or sadness carries its own kind of perfection. It’s a commitment to stop abandoning ourselves and start appreciating ourselves, even if we think we don’t deserve it. It’s a commitment to stop listening to the devil when an old wound comes up. If we do, our lives will be filled with never ending suffering. If we recognize the source of our suffering and accept ourselves as we are, our lives will be filled with forgiveness and compassion.
Diane Von Furstenberg says, “You’re always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company.”
If we can be kind to ourselves when we feel shame and embarrassment, life will be gentler. When something difficult appears in my psyche that I’ve dealt with over and over, I try to recognize it as my life’s work. I say, “Well here it is again. Big surprise.”
I try to be with myself in kind way. I don’t expect the obstacles to disappear when I’m kind, but they will get dimmer. Less powerful. I expect to keep learning from them and I hope I never stop. With all the spiritual work I’ve done in my life, I’ve learned that I’m not the only one dealing with these things. I’m not that special. I’m in good company. If I feel something like that, so do you. We may have different
stories, we may have had different experiences but the way we feel is the same. We are all fellow travelers walking along the same path together.
During my life, loneliness, fear and judgments have been constant companions. They’re like visitors who never go home. As I’ve confronted them daily, I’ve learned that when I make a commitment
to treat myself with respect, when I don’t burden myself with judgments and self-abuse, my life lessons don’t seem so insurmountable. “Here I am again,” I tell myself, “needing to make choices. Big surprise.”
When I accept this practice as my life’s work, I can surrender and stop fighting it. As long as I have something to work on that helps me grow, I have meaning in my life.
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